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Every once in a while, a really special book crosses your desk and you’re not expecting it to be anywhere near as good as it is. It becomes one of those pleasant surprises that reaffirm your love for comics, silly as that may sound. It happens a lot with me in genres that I’m not really tuned in to anymore (or at least that I’m not attuned to in the way I used to be). For example, superhero books. Long ago, I found myself feeling pushed out of the genre, the genre that got me hooked on comics in the first place. Things seemed a little less fun, continuity seemed harder and harder to follow, and the characters didn’t feel like the old friends I grew up with anymore. It may have been my reading tastes that changed, or maybe it was them…whatever it was, things certainly didn’t feel the same.

A long time ago, someone told me it’s never a good idea to meet your heroes. They seldom live up to your expectations, and they often turn out to be far more human than you imagined (if not downright rude). Happily, that did not turn out to be the case when, last week, I got to talk to one of my absolute favorite comic-books artists of all time, Joe Staton. Joe, I’m glad to report, is actually charming and kind, and we had a great chat (the transcript of which you’ll find in my interview with Joe). Joe was one of the very first artists I ever took notice of when I began reading comics: He worked on just about every single one of my favorite books, including The Legion of Super-Heroes, Green Lantern, and the adventures of all the Earth-2 heroes for DC (like The Justice Society and The Huntress). We talked a lot about the old days in comics and the modern, including his new work on an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Anthem.